


like the days of summer

by calciseptine



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Age Difference, Childhood Friends, Kinda, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calciseptine/pseuds/calciseptine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You really haven't changed at all, Iwa-chan," Oikawa tells him. "Once a grumpy old man, always a grumpy old man."</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the days of summer

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Iwaizumi Appreciation Week. The prompt was childhood.
> 
> Title from _Rainy Monday_ by Shiny Toy Guns.

Spring in Sendai is a war between the dying winter and the conquering summer. Some days are hot, the sun intense in the dry air, while others are brisk and demand that Iwaizumi dons a heavier coat and a lumpy knitted scarf he received from his cousin two years ago. The Wednesday Iwaizumi stumbles onto the 7:18 train, uncharacteristically late for work, is one of the rare seasonable days that is neither; it is cool but not cold, and Iwaizumi is comfortable in his sturdy jeans, worn sneakers, and light sweater.

Caught up in his own head—he has never been late to the shop since he opened it—Iwaizumi accidentally knocks his shoulder against one of the other passengers. He glances up at the stranger to apologize, and—

"Iwa-chan?" the other man says, his eyes wide in surprise. He's several inches taller than Iwaizumi and several years younger. "I mean—Iwaizumi? Hajime?"

Iwaizumi feels his eyebrows furrow. There's something familiar about the other man: the shape of his face, the chestnut color of his hair, the fullness of his mouth. The inability to remember him irks Iwaizumi; Iwaizumi doesn't forget people easily, especially people that look like they should be the lead in a teenage drama series or a model for an international clothing line.

"Ha," the other man laughs, his shock melting into warmth. He appears to not notice—or rather, not care—how intensely Iwaizumi scrutinizes him. "You haven't changed a bit, have you, Iwa-chan?"

Like everything else about him, the way he shortens Iwaizumi's name is both familiar and out of reach.

"Do I know you?" Iwaizumi asks.

The other man is unfazed by Iwaizumi's bluntness, which further proves that he is not as much of a stranger as Iwaizumi might have guessed. It takes most people months to get used to the straight-forward way Iwaizumi speaks his mind. He knows he can come off rude and mean, even though his intentions are neither.

"A long time ago, and only for a summer," the other man says with a shrug. "I was—nine? Maybe ten?" He smiles, softly and intimately, and his gaze flickers to the middle distance as he gets lost in a memory. "You taught me how to play volleyball."

It is that last detail that solidifies Iwaizumi's hazy half-remembrances.

"Oikawa Tooru," Iwaizumi says, his epiphany bringing both clarity and surprise. He blinks a couple of times and takes in the other man a second time. Now that he knows, it's easy to see how the kid next door with the twig-like limbs and the big mouth became the person in front of him. Like most people from his hometown, Iwaizumi had not expected to see Oikawa ever again.

"So you do remember me!" Oikawa's grin grows. His grin is as devious as it was when he was a child, yet as an adult, it's equally charismatic. "And here I thought I was just an annoying kid to you."

Oikawa had moved in next door six months before Iwaizumi moved to the city for community college. He _had_ been annoying at first, when he came over to Iwaizumi's house and pestered Iwaizumi into doing what he wanted; eventually, however, Oikawa's visits were the highlight of Iwaizumi's day. Iwaizumi knew his friends thought it was weird that he preferred to spend his last weeks with some kid rather than them, but their opinions meant little to him. He had been planning to leave their isolated town and never return, after all.

"You weren't annoying," Iwaizumi corrects the other man. "You were a pain in my ass."

Oikawa tilts his head back as he laughs. He had done the same when he was younger, though back then, Oikawa started to snort when it got to be too much. Iwaizumi wonders if he still does that.

"You really haven't changed at all, Iwa-chan," Oikawa tells him once his laughter has subsided. His eyes glitter beneath the long curl of his lashes. "Once a grumpy old man, always a grumpy old man. How does your girlfriend put up with you?"

If Oikawa wasn't a stranger—if his ribbing was deliberate—Iwaizumi would have punched him in the arm for that comment. But Oikawa is a stranger despite their long-ago friendship, and cannot know that Iwaizumi has the worst luck when it comes to romance. Mattsun—Iwaizumi's friend from community college and co-owner of their carpentry shop—likes to tell him that he hasn't met the right person yet. Iwaizumi likes to tell Mattsun to shove it where the sun doesn't shine.

Instead, Iwazumi snorts noncommittally. 

"No girlfriend?" Oikawa confirms. Then, more lightly, "Boyfriend?"

There's a forced brevity in Oikawa's tone that Iwaizumi could mistake for teasing if he wanted. He could fake ignorance and tell Oikawa—tell the little boy who fumbled his volleyball serves and watched terrible alien movies—that he is not interested.

But Iwaizumi hates to lie.

"No," Iwaizumi tells Oikawa, just as lightly. "I don't have a boyfriend, either."

Oikawa's relief is evident. His tight shoulders loosen and the sharpness in his expression softens. Iwaizumi only notices how tense Oikawa is once he isn't; Oikawa wasn't so guarded when he was a child. It makes Iwaizumi ache with nostalgia for their childhood.

"You've grown up," Iwaizumi realizes.

"A little bit," Oikawa amends, his heavy gaze falling to Iwaizumi's mouth. "But some things are still the same."

And Iwaizumi knows, with an odd but absolute certainty, that Oikawa is going to kiss him.

He thinks about stopping Oikawa. They had been as close as brothers that summer and Oikawa had been an innocent, if not precocious, nine-year-old. That child is the person that Iwaizumi remembers and knows—but then again, so is the young man standing in front of Iwaizumi with wonder in his eyes. And while it may be a little weird, or perhaps a little wrong, to kiss someone Iwaizumi knew as a child, Oikawa is an adult now. He is old enough to make his own decisions and have those decisions be respected.

(Iwaizumi thinks, also, about how much he wants to get to know the handsome man in front of him. He wants to know to know if Oikawa is still irritatingly stubborn; still uncannily perceptive; still determined and proud and clever. He wants to find out where Oikawa went to middle school and high school, what subjects he liked, if he continued to play volleyball like he said he would. And he wants to learn what Oikawa's hair will feel like between his fingers, how easily Oikawa's pale skin will bruise beneath his teeth, and how Oikawa will fit beneath him, above him, and beside him.

So when Oikawa breathes, "I've wanted to do this for forever," Iwaizumi feels like he's been waiting just as long.)

Oikawa cradles Iwaizumi's face in his broad palms and Iwaizumi has to tilt his head back to meet Oikawa halfway. It's the first time Iwaizumi has kissed someone taller than himself, but Iwaizumi forgets the small strangeness as Oikawa presses his dry, plush mouth gently against Iwaizumi's. The kiss feels warm, and inevitable.

They kiss several times on the morning train, swaying with one another as the car intermittently slows down and speeds up. When they pull apart, it is only far enough for Iwaizumi to see Oikawa's face clearly.

"Do you remember what you promised me before you left?" Oikawa asks softly, his long arms looped around Iwaizumi's shoulders. "That you would come back and spend the summer with me?"

"I do," Iwaizumi whispers back. He remembers how Oikawa struggled not to cry, how he threw his skinny arms around Iwaizumi's waist and clung to him. He remembers how hard it was for both of them and how, when he swore to come back in the summer, he had meant every word. "You made me pinky promise."

"But you didn't keep it," Oikawa says. His pout is fake, but there's an old hurt in his brown eyes. Iwaizumi sighs and knocks his forehead lightly against Oikawa's, as though to push the ache out.

"Of course I didn't, idiot. You moved. To Kakuda."

"You should have visited me."

There are many reasons Iwaizumi did not visit Oikawa when he moved. Iwaizumi had been busy—community college was harder than he expected, and his apprenticeship demanded most of his free time—and Kakuda was an hour south of Sendai. Mostly, Iwaizumi had not visited because Oikawa hadn't left his new address behind and Iwaizumi thought it meant that Oikawa had forgotten about him. Iwaizumi had accepted that, readily if not sadly.

"I'm sorry," Iwaizumi murmurs, tightening his grip on Oikawa's lean hips. "This time, I'll be there whenever you need me."

"Promise?"

It's an amazing coincidence that they've found each other after ten years of separation, in a city of one million people, on a train that Iwaizumi is riding nearly an hour later than he usually does. Those odds are so improbable they are nearly impossible, and Iwaizumi isn't the kind of person who ignores what fate brings him. He's already had one chance—he isn't going to need a third.

"I promise," Iwaizumi says.  



End file.
